Truth Takes Time
by SpyMaster
Summary: A multi-show crossover with Alias, CSI:NY, Numb3rs and Without a Trace. Emily Sloane goes missing, Robert Dunbrook is Alliance and the SD-6 invasion crew are found by the FBI. Worlds collide in this dramatic tale about love, power, obsession and family.
1. Setting the Scene

**Authors Note:** First of all I want to say a huge thank you to DianeM for beta reading this for me. It's not a typical WaT story and so for her to agree at all was incredibly kind, for her to work through what turned out to be appalling punctuation (in my defence I didn't realise it was quite that bad) was even kinder. A while back on Maple Street I asked for prompts, I tried to write with those but every word was torture. I did some free association and realised that I just wasn't enthused about that story. Then I got this crazy idea for what turned out to be a multi-show crossover. I wrote almost 12,000 words in a day and another 5,000 to finish the story the next day. This has actually turned out to be a part one, of probably three. I hope that this story will be understandable to everyone, rather than just people who watch all four shows. Anyway, if you're confused about please let me know so I can try and edit in an explanation. It's a bit difficult for me being a fan of all four to see it from the perspective of a non-viewer. The shows are Alias (from 1.15 Page 47), CSI:NY (from 5.04 Sex,Lies and Silicone), Numb3rs (pre-Janus List) and of course Without a Trace (from Fall Out). No show is really bigger than the others but will only let me cross it over in two categories. I hope that you enjoy reading at least half as much as I enjoyed writing it, I really had fun writing this. Enjoy! Oh nearly forgot there's one change I made to canon so this story would work that you might just want to keep in mind. This is set in New York so Alias and Numb3rs are also set there as opposed to LA which is canon.

* * *

Jack Malone sat in the chair by his marital bed, the early morning sunlight from the window bathing him in soft light. He'd been sitting there a while watching his wife sleep, feeling sort of numb to it all. Time had passed and he hadn't really noticed. It was only now that Maria was starting to stir that he suddenly realised what he was doing and that watching someone sleep when they were unaware that you were there could be construed as somewhat creepy. Maria's eyelids flickered open and she saw him; it was a little late to turn back. To her credit, she didn't scream or even say anything, she just stared at him in frank appraisal for a long minute.

"I suppose you want to come back," Maria said very matter of factly, sitting up in bed and watching Jack now with cool eyes.

Jack nodded slowly.

In truth, he wasn't sure at all that's what he wanted but that's what seemed to be the right thing to do. Maria was his wife, the mother of his children. He'd got so caught up in his work he'd let it fall apart, then he'd compounded that error by having an affair. A small corner of his brain whispered traitorously that it wasn't exactly an affair, well not how he would have imagined one to be like. In the dark recesses of his heart he admitted what his mind refused to acknowledge - that he loved Samantha in a way he'd never loved his wife. However, right then that couldn't matter. Maria was his wife, the mother of his children.

"There's blood on your shirt," Maria commented absently, getting out of bed and tying on a robe.

"It's not mine," Jack responded, feeling a flashback of the gut-wrenching terror he'd felt when he'd first seen Samantha, lying pale and bleeding on the floor of the bookstore.

Something must have shown on his face because Maria frowned, "Whose is it?"

Jack hesitated, "Samantha's."

"I see," Maria said tightly. "What happened?"

"Had a drop go bad, our suspect held Samantha and a half dozen other people hostage. One of the hostages decided to play hero and Samantha was shot," Jack told her, hoping she would leave it at that. Maria hadn't asked any questions about his work since shortly after they were married. However, with the tenacity she usually saved for the courtroom, she continued. It was like she smelled blood.

"How did she bleed on you, Jack?"

With an air of a man who knew he was condemned, Jack decided to just tell the truth. "The suspect was being uncooperative and she was bleeding to death. I went into the bookstore and got her out."

"Your suspect just let you do that?"

"No, I had to stay as a hostage." Jack couldn't look at her. His marriage had been on the rocks long before his relationship with Samantha had gone beyond professional boundaries. However, he supposed the insult of him being with another woman made Maria blame his affair as being the reason why their marriage almost ended.

"You traded your life for hers, your life for your whore." Jack opened his mouth to object - Samantha was not a whore - but Maria was just getting up a full head of steam. "Did you stop to think at all about your daughters? Your suspect had already shot one FBI agent, who's to say he wouldn't have shot you? How could you be so selfish?" Somehow Jack knew that she wasn't saying that because she was concerned; it was just something to bash him for. She'd been looking for a reason since she woke up. It was going to be a long, painful reconciliation. He just wished he could be sure it was worth it, because part of him - a bigger part than he wanted to acknowledge - was screaming that this was the wrong move.

_Brooklyn, New York_

_Two Weeks Later_

"What a way to spend a Saturday night," Colby commented dryly. "Anything yet?"

"No," David replied, looking through the binoculars again. They were in the apartment across the street from the storage unit they were watching. An informant had tipped them off that Mason, a popular go-to guy for high-end weapons, was getting out of the game, that tonight was going to be his last hurrah. They'd been trying to get something on him for years; tonight might well be their last chance.

"Nothing's going to happen, we've been played. I bet Mason's at home having a good laugh," Colby said, shaking his empty coffee cup in annoyance.

"I'll take that bet," David smiled, handing Colby the binoculars. Colby looked through them and saw that Mason had just arrived. Another car pulled up behind them and three men and a woman got out. Mason looked around him before opening the unit, then gestured for his guests to stay put and disappeared inside. "Yeah, Don Mason's arrived and he's not alone. Okay, see you in a minute," David said as he pulled his gun out of his holster and readied it. Colby did the same. They swiftly left the apartment, crossed the street and got into position, about a hundred yards away from their suspect. In the meantime, Mason had been busy. Three of his guests were now holding machine guns, the fourth held a case which probably contained explosives.

"We're in position, Don," David whispered, and turned to Colby. "On three." Using his fingers, David did the three count and then stood up.

"FBI," David and Colby shouted. A hundred yards in the other direction he heard Don and Megan do the same.

Mason dove for the storage unit; one of the buyers moved the machine gun in a circular motion, firing and causing the FBI agents to dive for cover. The other buyers had got back in the SUV. Still firing sporadically, the last man backed up to the SUV before quickly getting inside. Don and Colby both shot at the car but before they could even think about pursuing, Mason re-emerged and he was heavily armed. All four of the FBI agents fired at him. Mason dropped to the ground and there was an explosion, knocking the agents back down to the ground. Don staggered back up on his feet and shakily aimed his gun back in Mason's direction, or what was left of him. Mason and his storage unit were gone; all that was left was a burning crater. The paperwork was going to be fun on this one.

_Credit Dauphine_

_One Week Later_

The security agent pulls out his radio. "Hey you know about any AC repairs?" A man dressed in overalls appears behind him and hits him over the head. An assault team of five men and a woman disappear through a newly made hole in the wall. Another agent enters his access number on a panel to turn off lazers, one of the men breaks his neck, the team run down the hall. In the office above they knock out gas pumps through the AC system, and within minutes everyone is out cold.

...

"Explosives in place, activating detonator." With a boom of plastic explosive, a hole is made in the wall. The assault team is now in the room to access the vault.

...

"I'm a federal officer! Step out of the car, please. I'd like to ask you a few questions." The man gets out of the car, the federal officer sees his gun, a struggle ensues, the gun goes off, the driver slumps down dead. The federal officer throws him in the back of his own van and goes into the building through the hole in the wall.

...

One of the goons has a heartbeat detector. There's a heartbeat coming hidden from inside a locker. With a smile he raises his machine gun and fires a burst. He opens the locker, one of his comrade's falls out dead. From behind him a female agent approaches and shoots him once in the back of the head.

...

"Cole, come on," the female goon calls. He turns in a rage and shoots her twice.

...

"Kill them all." The last two goons left apart from the boss raise their machine guns. The female agent throws an explosive ring; it knocks one of the men into the path of bullets from the other. A male agent kicks the last remaining goon, takes his gun and shoots him. The invasion was over.

_Samantha's Apartment_

_At The Same Time_

He was in hell and, contrary to popular belief, it wasn't warm there - it was cold, ice cold, numbingly cold. That was what he was, numb. It was three weeks after the bookstore incident and this was the first time he'd gone to see Samantha. Well, technically the first time he'd gone to see her. If his travels had taken him to St. Vincent's Hospital from time to time, and if he'd wandered up to her floor and looked in through the window, and maybe read her chart occasionally, that was just happy coincidence. Samantha had been released after a week; they didn't keep people in hospital five minutes these days. If he'd occasionally driven past her apartment building after that, and spoken to her building super, well he was just a concerned boss. He wondered whom he was lying to, himself because that was pointless because he knew the truth. Although if he was lying to himself, it was easier to lie convincingly to Maria. He hated himself for that, she deserved better. She might seem to relish tearing him to pieces, but she was a good person, the mother of his children. It was his guilt over being so apathetic to let it fall apart, when faced with Barry Mashburn's overwhelming love for his wife, that had taken him back to her. He'd been raised to believe that parents should stick together; that it was better for the children that way. God only knows that his parents might have been happier apart but they'd stayed together. He wanted what was best for his daughters, although he was starting to doubt that this was it. Watching their mother verbally beat their father couldn't be good for them. It was a little late for doubts, though, because he was somewhat committed. He kept that in mind when the team went to visit Samantha at her apartment. She'd been home two weeks and would be back to work in a week, but this was the first time the team had managed to get together. They'd been busy with cases and being an agent down and with him on desk duty while his actions over the bookstore were reviewed, they'd been even busier. Danny had still insisted they go visit, and while the gift of the food hamper would probably have been more appreciated two weeks ago, it was the thought that counted. Samantha greeted them happily enough, but Jack knew her well and could sense she was somewhat withdrawn and she wouldn't meet his eyes, or maybe it was he who wouldn't meet hers.


	2. The Jack Attack

**Author's Note:** First of all a big thank you to DianeM for beta reading this story, in addition to the amazing amount of punctuation correction she's also identified British only expressions that I'd used without realising. So a huge thank you to her. Also, a huge thank you to jbird and emmaloufudge for their reviews. I don't write for the reviews but they certainly are very nice. As always if something isn't understandable or you think there's some other problem with the story please let me know, I'd like to improve. Now on with the story. Enjoy!

* * *

_The Sloane Residence_

_One Week Later_

'So much could go wrong with this,' Sydney thought. In another life being invited to dinner at her boss's house would have been an amazing opportunity, a chance to impress him and get ahead in her career. In another life, though, she wouldn't have manipulated her boss's dying wife to get the invitation, and she certainly wouldn't be planning to break into his safe to steal part of a priceless manuscript. In another life she wouldn't be a spy whose cover was a loan officer for a bank, or a double agent whose goal it was to bring down her boss to get justice for a dead fiancé. Another life would be a little simpler, less chance of things to go wrong and end in her death and the death of everyone she cared about. As if sensing her doubt, her phone rang.

"Hello, it's Francie." Despite herself, Sydney smiled hearing Vaughn's voice at the other end. Vaughn was her CIA handler and in many ways the guardian angel she'd once jokingly called him.

"It's Francie," Sydney told Will, who nodded in understanding. Will was someone who would be hurt if this went wrong. He wasn't part of her insane life, he was just a reporter and a good friend. She never should have let her guilt help Emily persuade her to bring a friend. "I'm sorry I have to take this," she apologised to her boss, Sloane. She was committed to the plan now.

"Francie's a friend who's having a hard time right now," Will explained as Sydney hurried out of the dining room towards Sloane's office. She put her cell in her pocket and pulled out her safecracking equipment. She'd feel a lot more confident using a Flinkman special, but the CIA issue would have to do. She dropped the paperclip bug into a mug on Sloane's desk, which held pens and other small miscellaneous office equipment, and set to work.

"How's it going?" Sydney whirled round, relieved to see her father, Jack Bristow, standing there holding a new bottle of wine.

"Almost done," Sydney told him. As if to prove her right, the safe clicked unlocked at that moment. She pulled open the door and turned back to Jack in shock. "The manuscript's gone." From another corner of the house a loud crash sounded and Sydney exchanged a worried glance with Jack. He went off to investigate the noise and she quickly erased any evidence that she was there. She was halfway down the corridor from the study when Sloane rounded the corner up ahead.

"What was that?" Sydney asked, trying to calm her rapidly beating heart. If she'd been just a few seconds slower, she would have been caught and with the manuscript missing completely, instead of the one page that she had been planning on taking and substituting with a counterfeit, and that would have been very bad.

"A broken window," Sloane said, not slowing his stride at all as he headed to the study. Sydney followed him. He didn't head towards the safe; instead he went to his computer and tapped a few keys. "The security system has been turned off."

"Sydney, Arvin," Jack shouted. Sydney turned and ran in the direction of her father's voice. He was in the dining room bending over an unconscious Will.

"Will," Sydney cried, rushing to her friend's side. She felt his pulse, which was strong and steady. Something had knocked him over the back of his head, and he was bleeding.

"Have you seen Emily?" Jack asked, standing up, his eyes taking in the scene and looking for anything out of place.

"What about Emily? What's happened?" Sloane demanded, striding into the dining room.

"I just found Mr. Tippin unconscious. I don't know what happened to him or where Emily is," Jack told him. Sloane paled slightly, turned and left the room, presumably to search for his wife. Jack looked back at Sydney and Will; he had a bad feeling about this.

_FBI Headquarters_

_The Same Time_

"You're here late." Don Eppes smiled as he walked into the breakroom and found Liz Warner, his girlfriend and sometimes colleague, pouring a cup of coffee.

"I could say the same, Eppes," Liz retorted, moving over slightly so Don could get to the coffee machine but would still have to invade her personal space.

"The report on the explosion at Mason's came in," Don explained. Mason blowing himself up hadn't seemed right, but it turned out not to be anything suspicious, just a faulty grenade that he'd probably planned to throw in their direction, not worth wasting anymore time on. The gang he'd just outfitted with weapons was worth pursuing. However, it had been two weeks and there'd been no sign of them, which was troubling. It meant either they'd caused trouble somewhere and the FBI hadn't heard about it, or they were still biding their time, which meant when they eventually attacked it would be on a big scale. The team was still working on the case, but the trail was well and truly cold, so they were also working other cases until a new lead surfaced.

"So, you about ready to head home?" Don asked her, giving her his patented smile.

"I think the rest of my paperwork can wait till tomorrow,"

_The Sloane Residence_

_10pm - 1 Hour Missing_

"What have we got?" Samantha Spade asked. She'd been shot a month ago, a drop had gone bad and she'd been caught in a hostage situation. However, after two weeks of intensive physiotherapy her limp was barely noticeable, so it was time to get back to work.

"Good to have you back, Samantha," Danny Taylor smiled. He'd been worried about her but she seemed to be fine. "Emily Sloane, 52 years old, housewife, appears to have been abducted."

"Motive?" Samantha let her eyes drift across the scene. She didn't realise until her eyes found him that she'd been looking for him - Jack Malone, her boss, her friend, her ex-lover, the man she still loved despite it being over and the man who saved her life a month ago. "Be back soon," he'd said, but she hadn't seen him for days, not until the team as a whole came to visit. She knew then without being told that Barry had got to him, that he'd gone back to his wife. There was no other reason why he wouldn't have been to visit.

"Her husband, Arvin Sloane, is the CEO of Credit Dauphine, an investment bank based downtown." Danny told her. He followed her gaze and decided to ignore her preoccupation; her confusion was perfectly valid, after all.

"Ransom?" Jack finished his interview and turned. His eyes met hers for a long moment before he turned and walked over to a young man holding an ice pack to his head.

"Probably, Jack's just finished interviewing the husband and he might know more."

"I'm just going to…" Samantha gestured vaguely which could have meant any kind of direction and headed for Jack. Danny shook his head and headed for the NYPD officer at the door.

"This is a complete waste of time," Sloane fumed; next to him Jack Bristow was as calm as ever. "Our people should be on this."

"Our people are on this," Jack said calmly, "but appearances must be upheld, if . . ."

"The reporter," Sloane cut him off and glared darkly in Will's direction.

"Mr. Tippin's presence here tonight, given events, is unfortunate," Jack allowed. Whatever else he was going to say was stopped by the ringing of Sloane's cell phone. Everybody stopped and looked at him.

Sloane took a deep breath to regain his poise before he answered, "Yes." Whatever, the person on the other end said shook him. Given his audience, he was extra careful to maintain his calm demeanour, but Jack Bristow had known Arvin Sloane for almost thirty years and knew him better than most. "I understand," Sloane said as he stared at his phone for a moment before he returned it to his pocket.

"Mr. Sloane." Jack Malone walked tiredly back over to the MP's husband. It was all going wrong. A month ago he'd gone back to his wife and begged for a second chance. He hadn't expected it to be easy, but he hadn't expected it to be this hard. It seemed Maria's terms for taking him back were to make his life as difficult as possible and to blame him for everything. If he tried to fight, she'd always end the argument by bringing up his affair and how he'd traded his life for his mistress.

That was actually mostly why he was having trouble sleeping. He was feeling guilty over not having gone to visit Sam more, a foreign emotion in regards to her, though he certainly should have had cause to feel it before because it was just all so easy with her. Now, on top of everything he had this case. Usually a work case would be a welcome respite but Sam was now back at work and however relieved he was at that prospect, it would make Maria worse. He also had to deal with what he predicted was going to turn out to be the most uncooperative family member ever. "Who was that on the phone? Was it a ransom demand?"

"No," Sloane replied simply. "It was a colleague of mine from London." Sloane met Jack Bristow's eyes to ensure his meaning wasn't lost. "A business matter, nothing important."

"If a ransom demand is received, rest assured, Agent Malone, you will be the first person we call," Jack lied. He doubted they'd call the FBI at all. "Now, if you'll excuse us. It's been a long evening and I think my friend should get some rest. If you're all finished."

"I don't believe the techs have finished yet," Jack Malone said, more to be obstructive than anything else. He truly had no idea whether they were done or not. They might well be, since there wasn't much to process. There were no obvious signs of forced entry apart from the broken window, which didn't look like it had been used to enter or exit. It was all very odd.

"They're finished," Jack Bristow stated coolly. While being less than perfectly cooperative with the FBI was probably not the best strategic move, he didn't think Arvin could take much more. He was irritated enough as it was. Also, he himself was impatient to find out why the Alliance was calling. "My daughter Sydney will show you out."

"Very well," Jack Malone agreed through gritted teeth. He turned smartly on his heel and began ordering everybody out.

Jack Bristow looked over to Sydney and nodded once to let her knew she was in charge now, before he followed Arvin to his study. He quietly clicked the door shut behind him. "What did Christophe want?"

Arvin looked up at Jack from where he was sitting, looking defeated, in his office chair. "Emily's somehow found out about my work for SD-6. They want me to kill her, Jack."

Jack frowned slightly in confusion, "They want you to kill her? Christophe wasn't calling to inform you of security sections action?"

"No. The Alliance won't believe this, Jack. They'll think that I somehow anticipated their order. What am I going to do?" Sloane asked. Jack didn't answer, thinking furiously about the best move he could make here. He felt sorry for Arvin, as they had been friends for a long time, but his first loyalty here wasn't to his friend, it was to the CIA. The move he made had to be the most advantageous to them. While he was thinking, Sloane stood and walked over to the safe, which caught Jack's attention. While the theft was almost certainly connected, Arvin didn't need more bad news tonight.

"No." The exclamation of outrage and disbelief was more heartfelt than Jack would have believed. He'd realised over the past few months that Sloane was getting more and more interested with Rambaldi. That was certainly the direction where the majority of SD-6's resources seemed to be moving. Perhaps, though, he'd underestimated how entranced Arvin was becoming. One thing was sure - he'd have a lot to report to his handler tomorrow.


	3. Rollin' On

**Authors Note:** A big thank you to DianeM for beta reading this. My punctuation really was awful and she very patiently fixed it. Thanks to Mariel for her review. Here's another instalment. Enjoy!

* * *

_Dunbrook Media_

_9am - 12 Hours Missing_

"Arvin, sorry to call at such a bad time." Robert Dunbrook sat back in his executive office chair. He was a media giant, owned newspapers, TV stations, Internet sites; you name it, if it was in media, he had an interest there. He was also a founding member of the Alliance of Twelve; he had a seat at the table because of the money and the connections he had.

"Not at all," Sloane said calmly while mentally trying to reason out why Dunbrook would be calling. Due to them both being based in New York, they'd had some contact over the years. Dunbrook generally tended to keep out of the day-to-day running of the Alliance, which is what he was responsible for, preferring to keep in the background, taking intelligence and bankrolling operations. For him to call now probably meant he wanted something.

"I need a couple of your people to take care of something for me," Dunbrook requested. "A flash drive has fallen into the hands of the police that contains certain damaging information. I need it to be retrieved before it can be analysed."

"I see." Sloane thought about whom he could send. A mission this close to home was always potentially disastrous. However, given the current delicate situation he found himself in, having some leverage over a seated member could only help him. He'd send Sydney and Dixon, as they were his best team.

"There is one other thing," Dunbrook said.

"Okay, first where is the flash drive now?"

_New York Crime Lab_

_12 noon - 15 Hours Missing_

Sheldon Hawkes was not having a good day. Last night someone he'd once called friend had tried to emotionally blackmail him into tampering with evidence. When that had failed to work, he'd hired three thugs to jump him outside of his apartment to presumably intimidate him into doing what he wanted. So when he found Anne Steele's flash drive inside Trevor Jones' 'girlfriend' with the CSI equivalent of a smoking gun, fingerprints and blood trace, he couldn't help but feel like things were looking up. He quickly processed the trace before heading to the AV lab to get a look at this flash drive.

Meanwhile, outside the building Dixon was hacking into the CCTV camera feed. Marshall's lighter RF scrambler wasn't 100% effective in such a large building, so he had attached a remote modem to the junction box and was hacking in; within moments the CCTV was down.

"Okay, Syd, you're clear," he told her over comms. Sydney swiftly entered the building and flashed a fake ID badge and a brilliant smile at the security guard. Her skirt was deliberately a little shorter than office standard and, as predicted, the guard looked more at her legs than her badge. Inside the elevator she pulled out a lab coat from her handbag and hit the button for the 35th floor.

The doors pinged open and Sydney walked with purpose into the lab. This was the most dangerous part of the operation. They didn't know exactly where the flash drive was and looking for it would potentially endanger her cover. She was safe only if nobody questioned her right to be there. Looking unsure of where she was going coupled with the fact that obviously no one would recognise her would get questions. However, she was in luck. She hadn't been there more than thirty seconds when a guy in a lab coat, who looked like he'd lost a bout with Mike Tyson, walked out of one room and into a room with computers and was holding what looked like the flash drive. Sydney followed him into the room, looked left and right to check no one was looking at her. She pulled out a pen from her pocket that was actually an injector that contained a substance that would knock any man out cold for at least half an hour. Sydney quietly moved up behind him and stabbed him in the neck with the pen. She caught him as he collapsed, looked around to see if anyone had noticed anything, grabbed the flash drive and left. She'd got only a few steps down the corridor when Mac Taylor entered the AV lab. He saw Hawkes collapsed on the floor, looked to the other door and saw Sydney swiftly walking away.

"Hey, stop," Mac shouted, running after her. Sydney bolted for the stairs.

"Dixon, I've been spotted," Sydney told her partner over comms. Running down the stairs, she could hear more than one pursuer behind her; clearly the first guy had been joined by friends.

"Okay, hang tight, Syd, I'll meet you in the parking garage." Dixon put the van into reverse and accelerated hard, doing a fishtail turn out of his parking spot. All around him cars braked, swerved and hammered their horns. He didn't like this at all. Sure a lot of his missions for SD-6 were to steal one thing or another, but always before it was from other countries or criminals. This was the NYPD. They were supposed to be on the same side. When Sloane had given them the mission, he'd given a vague explanation of corruption but something still didn't seem right.

Dixon crashed through the barrier into the parking garage; he turned the van around so that he was on the same side as the door. A moment later the door opened with a crash and Sydney ran through and towards the van. Behind her two men burst out of the door. With great reluctance, Dixon lifted his gun and fired a few shots well over their heads. It was enough to get them to dive to the ground and gave Sydney time to get around to the other side of the van and jump in. He shot a few more rounds off to keep the men hugging the ground before, with squealing tires; he quickly accelerated out of the parking lot.

That had not gone well; they were supposed to get in and out with nobody any the wiser. Sydney had been in disguise like always. Her wig this time was a short natural red, and he'd pulled on a ski mask before driving into the garage. He'd taken the CCTV out, so there should be nothing to personally identify either of them. The gun would have to be destroyed and the van the same or made over with new plates, wheels and paint job. The situation was easily solved but it was hardly the easy deniable operation that Sloane had wanted.

Back at the crime lab, "Are you ok?" Mac asked as he stood up and brushed off the grit that was clinging to his shirt and pants.

"Thirty five flights of stairs, Mac," Danny Messer replied wryly. From behind them, guns drawn, Don Flack and Stella Bonasera arrived on the scene.

"What the hell happened?" Flack demanded, scanning the area quickly for threats before holstering his gun.

"Lab security comprised for the second time in as many days," Mac answered angrily before taking a deep breath and accessing the scene. "Danny go and get Lindsay and your kits, we need to process down here." Danny nodded and disappeared off to the elevator. "Stella, go see what security has on CCTV and Don…."

"Already on it, Mac," Flack said as he pulled out his cell phone. "I'll get uniforms to lock this place down,"

"Right," Mac said and stalked off towards the elevator. First, he had to check on Hawkes and then he had a Chief of Police's ear to bend about dodgy security, although given what he'd said yesterday when he'd complained after someone had broken into the morgue, perhaps he'd be better off complaining to the mayor directly. One of his people had been attacked, evidence had been stolen from his lab, and someone was going to answer for this.

_FBI Headquarters_

_12 noon - 15 Hours Missing_

"Okay, what do we have?" Jack Malone rubbed his eyes tiredly. The call out to Emily Sloane's abduction had come after he'd already gone home last night. Maria had not been pleased, so rather than travel all the way back home; he'd stayed in his office. The couch was just as uncomfortable now as it had been ten months ago.

"A window smashed with a rock at the rear of the property, evidence suggests it wasn't used to enter or exit," Martin Fitzgerald began. Was it wrong to profit from someone else's misfortune? When Jack had traded his life for Samantha he'd thought that was it, it was all over, there was no way he could compete with that. He'd had a crush on Samantha since he'd joined the unit, but he'd realised pretty quickly that he was competing with his married boss and as Samantha had told him herself, she liked her relationships nice and complicated, so he counted himself out of the game. Now that Jack was failing to capitalise on recent events, actually gone in completely the opposite direction, he was thinking of dealing himself back in. He hesitated slightly, though, because Jack really did look awful.

"A Mr. Will Tippin was knocked unconscious with a candlestick present at the scene. He doesn't remember anything. One minute he was talking to his host, the next he was waking up on the floor with a lump on his head. He's a reporter for a metro newspaper and was the invited friend of another guest," Danny Taylor reported, his eyes going from one colleague to another. 'Oh, this wasn't awkward at all,' a snarky corner of his brain commented.

"There were three other people in the house at the time: Arvin Sloane, the husband; Jack Bristow, an old family friend who has just joined Credit Dauphine, the bank run by Mr. Sloane; and his daughter Sydney, who also works at Credit Dauphine and is the one who invited Will Tippin," Samantha said, looking at Jack and yet trying not to look at him. He looked awful. There were big black smudges under his eyes and his shirt was crumpled like he'd slept in it; his clean office shirt must already have been used this week. She felt sorry for him; she would always care that he was suffering, although a small part of her whispered somewhat bitterly that it served him right. He'd made his choice, now he had to live with it.

"I've started running full backgrounds on everyone present. Mr. Tippin seems clean, nothing of interest so far. Sydney Bristow lost her fiancé last year; he was brutally murdered, apparently during a robbery at his home, and no one's been caught yet. Jack Bristow's wife Laura died in an accident twenty years ago, her car went into the river, no body was ever recovered," Vivian offered, Jack raised his eyebrows.

"A possible pattern," he suggested. It certainly seemed like a big coincidence that of the people present, all but one had lost their partners.

"Maybe, there's also an FBI file on Jack Bristow. It's with the counter-intelligence unit, but I haven't been able to get anything more than the file reference yet, so no idea what it's about."

"The counter-intelligence unit?" Danny whistled. "Is he a spy?"

"He works for a bank, and before that he sold airplane parts. Doesn't exactly say James Bond to me," Samantha interjected. She wanted normality, or something close to it. Back to what they'd had before Farrell had come and stirred up dirt, before the bookstore. She wanted the easy humour and banter. If it was a little forced at the beginning, from her at least, then so be it.

"Okay. Vivian, keep trying to get that file. Martin, look into Credit Dauphine. Samantha, dig deep into the husband's background, something's not right with him. Danny, you and I are going to go see the husband," Jack ordered. The team stood, gathered the file folders and went to their assigned tasks.

_New York Crime Lab_

_1pm - 16 Hours Missing_

"All right, Sheldon, take your time," Mac said soothingly. He'd just spent half an hour chewing out a bunch of important people for their failures, which had led to this, so he was feeling a little better now than he had an hour earlier.

"I'm okay, Mac, really. I don't know what they hit me with but as fast as it acts, it wears off," Hawkes said. In truth, he was feeling a little woozy, but he thought that came more from the beating he'd got last night than the knockout drug. "I'd processed the trace on the flash drive and I took it into AV to get a look at the contents, see what was worth killing for and to see if there was an additional link to Trevor Jones."

"Additional link?" Mac queried.

"Oh, right," Hawkes said, backing up a bit. "I found blood and a fingerprint on the flash drive. The blood matches Anne Steele's and it's beneath the fingerprint that is Trevor Jones'. I also found the flash drive inside his doll."

"Adam," Mac looked towards his skittish lab tech, who was lingering nervously at the doorway to the break room.

"Yeah, boss."

"Go find Detective Flack-- he should still be downstairs--and tell him to get Trevor Jones in the interrogation room ASAP," Mac ordered. Adam nodded and disappeared. Mac nodded at Hawkes to continue.

"I'd barely got the directory up on the screen when I was knocked out," Hawkes told him.

"Can you remember anything at all? Names, numbers?" Mac pressed.

"Just the top few names: Enrique Alverez, Achmed Asanti, Bill Carter and Robert Dunbrook."

Mac nodded, it wasn't much to go on. After all, there had been a lot of names on that disk; it was a long shot that the person responsible was one of the top four names. However, it was all they had to go on right now, unless Trevor Jones gave them something more.

"Mac." Flack was at the door looking grim. "Trevor Jones was just found in the holding cell; he's been stabbed to death."


	4. Mysteries and Confrontations

**Author's Note: **Another huge thank you to DianeM for beta reading this. Also, thanks to jbird for the review. I hadn't really given any thought to the number of characters as I know who all of them are, but thinking about it there is rather a lot. That'll be something I'll need to consider more when I write the sequel. Cheers and enjoy!

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_City Morgue_

_1pm - 16 Hours Missing_

"Yeah, that's them," Colby confirmed Don Eppes' ID. Two weeks ago they'd surveilled a team getting kitted out with enough gear to start a small war. A gunfight had ensued and they'd lost them. For two weeks they'd worried over what those three men and one woman were up to. Now, they no longer had to worry; the bodies of two of the men and the woman had turned up dead, alongside three other men. What had happened? That was what they now had to discover.

The bodies had been found late yesterday evening in a dumpster, not half a block from the police plaza. Whoever was responsible for this clearly didn't want the bodies to disappear; they were making a statement. They'd been taken to the morgue and autopsied by the night shift. When Don and Colby had come in that morning on a different case, they had instantly recognised the man that had tried to mow them down with a machine gun.

"All of the victims were shot, in two cases multiple times, which is the cause of death. However, interestingly the calibre of the bullets was different in each case. I sent the bullets to ballistics, and a report should be ready soon," the pathologist reported.

"Thanks," Don said, turning with Colby to leave. "Call David, I'll call Megan, we're back on this case."

_Crime Lab Parking Garage_

_1pm – 16 Hours Missing_

"These bullets are really high up," Lindsay commented. She was four feet up a ladder to reach them to pull them out of the concrete. Most were mangled but, hopefully, combining what useable stria they got off each bullet they'd have enough to run through the database. "Are you sure they were shooting at you?"

"Considering you're picking bullets out of the wall, I think they were, Montana," Danny replied, over from where he was painstakingly moulding the tire tread. Lindsay gave him an impatient look and he smiled and said, "No, I get your meaning. Maybe the shooter was a bad shot or panicked; people generally don't like shooting at cops."

"Thank God," Lindsay muttered to herself. Despite doing her best to guard against it, Danny Messer had wormed his way into her heart. She'd pretended it was okay, but it had really hurt last year when he'd pushed her away after the death of a boy in his building. Now, though, they were back on track, even started discussing perhaps moving in together, which was good because she hadn't told him yet but she thought that she might be pregnant. "Okay, I'm done," Lindsay said as she carefully climbed down the ladder. "I'm going to go give these bullets to Stella, see you in a bit."

_Credit Dauphine_

_1pm – 16 Hours Missing_

Jack Malone was getting more and more irritated by the second. He'd been standing in the lobby of the Credit Dauphine building for over twenty minutes now waiting to speak with Arvin Sloane. For a man who had professed, when he'd interviewed him last night, to love his wife more than anything, he had a strange way of showing it. Going to work the next day like his wife hadn't been abducted the night before, being uncooperative with the federal agents trying to find his wife. He'd also been too calm; something was off about Arvin Sloane. While he always preferred to work a case on the presumption the missing person was alive, he wouldn't be at all surprised to find that in this case she wasn't, that her husband had killed her. Although quite why he would have chosen to do so on a night they had guests at their home remained a mystery.

"Agent Malone." Sloane had reluctantly left the sanctuary of his office. He'd spent the morning trying desperately to come up with a plan to get out of the mess he was in. His thinking kept being interrupted, though, first by Robert Dunbrook, who had wanted two problems taken care of. He had hoped then that he would have a lifeline but the flash drive, while full of interesting information, contained nothing he didn't already know about Dunbrook, that he was connected to the Alliance. Now the FBI had come to see him at work, putting him in an even more precarious position with the Alliance, as federal attention to one of the cells was something they wouldn't like. He'd have to find something for them to chase down. He had Jack Bristow properly looking into Emily's disappearance. If anyone could find her it would be him, not some federal agent biding his time till retirement, which from the look of the lead agent wouldn't be long.

"Has anybody contacted you regarding your wife?" Jack asked. Sloane let some of his annoyance show through.

"I believe my friend Jack told you last night that if I heard anything I would call you. I haven't called because I haven't heard anything. I do hope you didn't come all the way down here just to get an answer you already had."

"No," Jack said through gritted teeth. Maybe it was this man's unflappable demeanour, but it really got under his skin. "If you haven't been contacted by now, ransom seems unlikely. Now, you weren't exactly forthcoming last night when I asked you about enemies." Jack looked to his left and saw Danny in his most intimidating stance, the one he saved for particularly annoying witnesses that he couldn't get up close and personal with. To his even greater annoyance, Sloane didn't even seem to notice.

"Why would I have enemies, Agent Malone? I'm a banker," Sloane told him, inwardly amused at the question. Who wasn't his enemy would have been slightly more appropriate. Fifteen years with the CIA and another fifteen with the Alliance gave him a lot of suspects to choose from.

"Yes, you're the CEO of his bank, aren't you?" Jack made a show of checking his notebook. Making someone who was important think his details weren't important enough to remember sometimes caused them to lose their cool a little. It was a petty play but he was running out of ideas. Arvin Sloane was almost too cold-blooded to be a banker. It would make more sense if he was a banker of the IRS variety, but he was just a banker. "Maybe a colleague you were promoted over is resentful? An employee you had to fire? A customer who couldn't keep up with his loan repayments?"

"I've received no threats, Agent Malone," Sloane lied. Over the years he'd received dozens. "Certainly nobody in any of those categories comes to mind." It helped that the last two categories didn't exist. However, the first category certainly would be worth looking at. He'd been head of SD-6 for over a decade now and he knew that if any of the current seated members were to die or otherwise need replacing, he would be a prime candidate to take their seat. Maybe someone decided to get rid of the competition a little early.

"I wish there was something that I could tell you that would be helpful," Sloane said regretfully. In truth, all he regretted was having the FBI on this case at all. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get back to work. I need to keep busy during this difficult time."

Jack bit back a number of sarcastic comments he could make to that. While he wanted to keep the pressure on Sloane, it wouldn't do to antagonize him too badly too early. "Of course, I understand."

_12__th__ Precinct_

_2pm – 17 Hours Missing_

Don Flack was irritated. His suspect, whom he was about to arrest for murde,r had just been killed, not only robbing him of a successful collar but also losing him the best potential source of information on the flash drive. He was now interrogating the other residents of the holding cell. Their attitude and steadfast denials of knowing anything wasn't making his mood any better. He stalked out of the interrogation room and snapped at a uniform to take him back to the holding cell.

"Tough day." Jessica Angell handed him a cup of coffee and Don felt his spirits lift. He'd been with a lot of women, but Jess was one he could see himself falling in love with, if he wasn't already. "There were ten other perps in the holding cell at the time, and here's what they were in for." Don took the sheet of paper gratefully and scanned the list, which was routine small fry stuff, but one entry caught his attention .

"Drunk and disorderly, picked up at 11am." While not unusual--New York City was the city that never sleeps, after all-- this precinct didn't generally see that sort of crowd. It might be nothing but anything out of the ordinary was worth investigating. He plugged the perp's name into his computer and swore violently; he was the guy and he'd been released already.

Angell leaned over his shoulder to see what had annoyed him now. "Pete Morris, died 1976."

_FBI Headquarters_

_3pm – 18 Hours Missing_

"Don, I think I've got something here," Megan said, calling him over to her desk.

"What is it?" Don asked, running a hand through his hair.

"In the pocket of one of the victims there was a set of car keys. I compared the style of the key and found out the make, which belongs to a Mercedes. I looked in the system and found that a week ago a rented Mercedes van with its side cut out, and 'McTiernan Air Conditioning' stenciled on the side, was found dumped in Queens. The techs found residue from plastic explosive on the side of the van," Megan told him. It might not be connected, but it seemed a pretty big coincidence not to be.

"All right, a break," Don said as he looked around. Colby was fueling up on coffee, David was at his desk. "You and David go and check it out, okay?"

_Crime Lab_

_4pm - 19 Hours Missing_

Mac walked into the ballistics lab. This was turning into one hell of a case. They'd solved Anne Steele's murder, but before they could arrest him, Trevor Jones had been killed while in police custody. Predictably, nobody had seen anything. The flash drive that Anne Steele had been killed over had been stolen from his lab. The CCTV had been cut, the licence plates didn't exist, and while he thought he could identify the woman if he saw her again, he wasn't so confident as to sit with a sketch artist. They needed a lead badly.

"Tell me we have something," Mac begged Stella, as she looked at him fondly.

"I'm running the bullets against the database now. Have a little faith in the evidence, Mac. Isn't that what you're always telling me?" Just then the computer bleeped; it had found a match. "What did I say?" Stella smiled. Mac came over and stood behind her to look over her shoulder as she checked the match. "Okay, not great, just a case-to- case hit. The gun that was used to shoot at you and Danny was also used to kill an unknown male. The body was found with five others, another four males and a female, in a dumpster half a block from police plaza. The FBI Violent Crimes unit is investigating."

"I'll go give them a call," Mac said, leaving the lab to go to his office. A jurisdiction battle with the feds, just what he wanted to end his day.

_Malone Residence_

_7pm – 22 Hours Missing_

Jack let himself in to his family apartment. For some reason he felt strange using a key, almost like he should knock. Well, he had been gone for nine months; he supposed it wasn't unreasonable for it to no longer feel like his home. He heard the scrape of a chair.

"Dad!" Kate, his youngest daughter, ran to meet him. Her reaction was one of the few positive results from his decision to come back home. She'd been so happy when she'd woken up and found him there that morning. Jack threw his coat onto the peg by the door and followed Kate back into the living room. There was a dining table under the window; it was set for three places only. Without a word, Jack headed to the kitchen, where there was still food left in the pot. While Maria could justify making him feel unwelcome, she couldn't justify not making enough for four. He grabbed what he needed and went back and sat down.

"I didn't know whether you'd be back," Maria explained, breaking the silence. Jack shrugged; she didn't need to explain herself. "After all, you didn't come back last night." Her tone was cutting and wouldn't be ignored.

Jack looked at her and spoke calmly, "I finished at the scene late and as you hadn't been happy about me going out at all, I thought it would be better not to disturb you."

"Where did you stay? With your . . ."

"Don't say it," Jack interrupted. He'd accept many things from her but that was not one of them. He realised a second later that Maria had been trying for that reaction.

"Stop it," Kate shouted. "I hate it when you fight," she cried and then ran off in the direction of her room. Hanna gave Jack a dirty look and went after her.

"Are you happy now, Jack?"


	5. Everything's Connected

**Authors Note:** A big thank you to DianeM for beta reading this story. You rock! Sorry for the week or so it's been since the last update November is crazy every year. To be honest if you'd told me it had been a couple of days I would have believed you. I have just over 20k written on my NaNo novel so I'm a bit behind but it's going well. In December I'll be back to fanfic. Now on with the story, enjoy!

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_Sloane Residence_

_7pm – 22 Hours Missing_

Sloane entered his house and immediately headed to the cellar to get a nice bottle of wine. It was days like today that made him glad that thirty years earlier he'd sensed the darkness coming. Today was one of those dark days he'd sensed. With the bottle of wine in one hand and a glass in the other, he headed towards his study. He plonked the bottle and glass down on the desk and slumped into his chair.

"Good evening, Arvin." Sloane looked up so fast his neck cracked. A woman walked out of the shadows of the corner of the room. As soon as he saw her, he recognized her and he knew then that everything was about to change.

_8am – 35 Hours Missing_

Will Tippin was driving to work, humming along to the radio. It was an ordinary day, finally. His life had got a little crazy for a while because of his investigation into Danny Hecht's murder and then Eloise Kurtz. After all, he'd never been kidnapped and had his life and the lives of those close to him threatened for any other story he'd done. He felt a little guilty about David McNeil. He'd believed that he was going to help him. He'd send his daughter into hiding because he believed that he, Will, was going to bring the truth to light. It was too big a risk, though, and now the decision was made, it was a load off his mind. He hadn't realised quite how much it was weighing on him. Maybe he wasn't made for the serious cases after all, however much he complained about the stories about people eating newspapers.

He came up to an intersection and put his foot on the brake to slow down. It sank mushily down to the floor and he didn't slow down at all. Will swerved out to avoid hitting the car in front of him, careened round the corner at the intersection, causing two other cars to crash into each other. He was panicking now, trying desperately to think of what to do, how to stop his runaway car, while not hitting anything. New York wasn't exactly the best city for this to happen in, given the frequent cases of gridlock. He kept swerving around cars, buses and taxis, leaving a trail of minor car smashes behind him.

"Oh, no," Will yelled. Up ahead there was a pedestrian crossing that had just gone green and now there was a dense pack of people walking across the road in front of him. He swerved desperately and went up on the pavement, knocking over tables and chairs of the corner coffee shop. People dove out of his way, and he got to the road and breathed a sigh of relief. Then from out between cars, a woman came pushing a stroller. He was so close, he wrenched the wheel as hard as he could, and there was a sickening crunch as he hit something before he smashed into a parked car, then up onto the pavement and into the steps of a house. Finally, the car stopped, not that Will noticed, as he was slumped over the wheel, blood pouring from his head.

_FBI Headquarters_

_9am – 36 Hours Missing_

"Samantha," Jack called from the entrance to the bullpen, a slip of paper in his hand. Samantha looked up; she'd only just reached her desk, not even taken her coat off yet. "A new lead, the owner of a B&B in the Hamptons, seems promising. You're with me." Samantha nodded jerkily in surprise, not that Jack was very pleased about this either. However, the rest of the team hadn't made it in yet, something about a multi-car pileup, and he didn't want to wait for them. He was impatient to get a lead on this. It had been 36 hours and he really didn't want this case to go cold, particularly not if it led straight back to Arvin Sloane. He really didn't like that guy.

Not that he was unhappy about working with Samantha, quite the contrary; they'd always worked extremely well together, which was part of the problem. Things were different now, and she probably felt betrayed, which was fully justified. He really wasn't eager to find out that their professional relationship was going to suffer; it was all he had left with her, after all. He ushered her out in front of him, his hand resting for a moment at the small of her back, before he realised what he was doing and shoved his traitorous hands in his pockets.

_9am – 36 Hours Missing_

Due to a major accident downtown in the city, the transport truck was cutting through Brooklyn on its way to the warehouse. The truck stopped at the traffic lights; the street appeared completely deserted apart from them. Suddenly there was a loud bang and the windshield exploded, and a canister fell to the floor, filling the small cabin full of smoke. The driver and the passenger guard started choking; gasping for air, they opened the doors and fell out. They'd barely taken one deep breath of clean air before they were both hit over the head with the butt of a gun by two masked men. Another man, one who felt no need to hide his face, strode up to the truck holding an RPG launcher.

"Okay, open it up," Sark ordered. The two men retreated to the back of the van. One slapped a block of plastic explosive onto the door before darting back out of range, the other pressed the detonator, and the doors exploded open, rocking back on their hinges. One masked man threw in another canister of smoke; he was answered by a spray of bullets from inside the van. The last guard appeared a moment later, unable to take the smoky confines of the van any longer, and he too was rendered unconscious like his colleagues. Sark donned a gas mask and jumped up into the van; he picked up the sole item within it, a silver briefcase and jumped back out. "It's time to go."

_New York University (NYU)_

_9am – 36 Hours Missing_

Folder in his hand, Don weaved expertly through the maze of corridors to his brother Charlie's office. He'd been coming here more regularly over the last few years since Charlie had starting consulting for him. Sometimes he resented the fact that he had to call in his little brother to help him do his job. Then there were days like today when he would be grateful for any kind of lead. There was a sixth sense that all law enforcement personnel were given to them along with their badges. His sixth sense was telling him that this case was bigger than they could imagine. It had already got another layer of mystery when late yesterday afternoon the crime lab had called to inform them of a case-to-case hit. Yesterday an unknown person had shot at two CSI's and stolen a flash drive; they'd been using the same gun that was used to kill one of their dead suspects. It was all obviously connected, but how-- that was the question. It was all very strange, although he was starting to wonder if they were chasing ghosts. The attack on the crime lab yesterday aside, there didn't seem to be any kind of imminent threat, which was a good thing, if odd.

"Hey, Charlie, Amita, Larry," Don greeted the people present, "I really need your help, buddy."

"What's the case?" Charlie held out his hand for the file, which Don handed him.

"We've got what looks like six dead terrorists. Last I saw them they were armed with weapons and explosives. I need to find out where they've been. They rented the van and there's a hotel reservation in their name as well, but the weapons aren't there. There were a few GPS points plotted on their device, but they never went to them," Don explained. Charlie thought for a moment, an image of a yacht tacking its way across the water flashed in his mind.

"Okay, I can use a variant of network analysis, using the known locations and the miles traveled to predict where they likely went."

"Okay, buddy, just call me when it's done okay?" Don left. Amita and Larry wandered over to Charlie and looked at the file.

"The movement of constellations often resembles the deceptive movements of mankind. What at first glance appears random nearly always has a reason behind it," Larry mused.

Amita nodded. "And we need to discover that reason. If we use the supercomputer, it shouldn't take too long."What she left unsaid was that she and Charlie could still make their date; from the cute smile he gave her, he was thinking it too.

_Credit Dauphine_

_9am – 36 Hours Missing_

Sloane smiled in satisfaction as he composed an email to Alain Christophe. Over the last week his standing within the Alliance had resembled a yo-yo. First an unknown group had sent a seven-man team to invade SD-6. They had killed six of them but the leader, a former SD-6 operative named Mckenas Cole, had got away with a Rambaldi artifact, an ampule with an unknown liquid inside. If it hadn't been for the quick actions of Jack Bristow, the whole building and everybody inside it would have been blown to pieces, due to the emergency fail safe he'd activated. He'd won some respect back by making a statement that he'd had the bodies of the invaders dumped near police plaza where they were quickly found and publicised.

Then there was the business with Emily. When she'd first gone missing, he'd been scared. When the Alliance had called to order him to kill her, he'd been terrified. After last night's visitor, he had a plan, one that suited his ends better than his previous course of action. He pulled up the file attachment to the e-mail, two photos of Emily pale and lifeless, with a bullet hole to the side of her head. Yes, things were starting to look up.

_9am – 36 Hours Missing_

"What a mess," Stella Bonasera commented, snapping a few more photos of this scene of vehicular carnage and fortunately the only fatality.

Danny Messer straightened up from where he'd been looking at the car responsible for the mess. "From what witnesses say, this car was out of control. We'll have to get it back to the lab to be sure, but it looks to me like the brake line broke, the line looks badly frayed."

"A case of poor maintenance," Stella replied and shook her head in disbelief at the senselessness of it. Tens of thousands of dollars in property damage, countless minor injuries and one dead bike messenger because someone couldn't be bothered to look after their car.

"The driver was taken to Trinity General. We can ask him later," Danny said as he snapped some pictures of his own of the car.

"And arrest him. We will definitely be paying Mr. Tippin a visit later."

_The Hamptons_

_11am – 38 Hours Missing_

"Well, that was a waste of time," Jack Malone grumbled, fishing in his pocket for the car keys. Samantha mumbled her agreement, an intensely uncomfortable drive to the Hamptons for a dead end. Well, not a complete dead end. Somebody had signed Emily Sloane's name in the guestbook but nobody at the B&B recognised her picture. They'd spoken to everybody who was currently staying there. It was a small B&B and there were only three guests, and Emily Sloane wasn't one of them. The case had been in the news yesterday, so it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that it was some wacko messing around, which did happen occasionally.

She had hoped that her professional relationship with Jack wouldn't have suffered. It never had before, and it hadn't changed at all during their affair or afterwards. They had an ease working together that had seemed so strong. However, Jack now seemed so ill at ease in her presence and it made her uncomfortable. She supposed that Maria was putting on the pressure. It couldn't have helped after all that months after it was over he'd traded his life for hers. That was a comfort to her, although she knew it shouldn't be. It's just she knew like Maria probably knew, that however much Jack cared for his team, however honourable he was, he wouldn't have broken that many rules, wouldn't have traded his life like that for Danny or Vivian or Martin.

"We'll find her, Jack," Samantha told him. She knew how his mind worked, knew that this case was one of the few where he didn't hold out much hope; she knew how that wore on him. Like in the past when this had happened, she'd hope enough for the both of them.

Jack looked up and met her eyes. She'd sometimes thought that they could almost communicate without words, however cliché that was. In that moment, though, they did. With his eyes Jack told her how he was feeling, he told her how sorry he was, and how he wished things were different.

"In another life," Samantha muttered as she got in the car. In another life things would be different but, like with the case, for the time being she would hope for the both of them that things could work out in this life.


	6. Conspiracy City

**Author's Note:** Another huge thank you to DianeM for beta reading this. Just to warn you I wasn't too happy with the end segment of this chapter. It feels like I took a bit of a logic leap to get the conspiracy taskforce working together. Anyway, just so you know it's the end of November so I'm done with NaNoWriMo, completed my second first draft novel at just over 51,000 words. So, now I'm free to write more fanfic. Definitely going to be bring at least one christmas story your way. Enjoy this story though right now!

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_Credit Dauphine_

_11am – 38 Hours Missing_

Jack Bristow looked up as someone called his name. Sloane was leaning out of his office door and beckoning him over. He seemed better this morning; either his mask was fully in place or he'd discovered something about Emily's disappearance that he hadn't. He hoped it was the latter, as being able to read Sloane made his double agent work for the CIA easier; however, he couldn't rule out the former.

"Yes, Arvin." Jack took the seat in front of the desk and waited while Sloane retook his seat. Sloane sat down and pulled a pen out of his pocket. Jack knew that pen because he had one just like it. It would neutralise bugs so you could have a private conversation for up to a minute.

"Emily is fine, Jack. I can't tell you anymore than that but whatever you might hear, Emily is fine,"

"Well, that's a relief," Jack said, his mind racing over possibilities and coming up empty. Unless Sloane was an even better actor than he'd ever believed, he was sure that he'd had no idea what had happened to her yesterday. That meant someone had taken her for a purpose unknown and one Sloane wasn't willing to share, which was troubling. If Sloane was being blackmailed, he had thought that the first person he would have confided in would have been himself. Sloane clicked the pen off and put it back in his pocket.

"The transfer of the Rambaldi manuscript this morning to the analysis warehouse failed. An armed team assaulted the van and stole the manuscript." If Jack could have applauded, he would have. That was an excellent play, as taking the manuscript home was so unprecedented the Alliance wouldn't even begin to suspect deceit. This way, Sloane could admit it was stolen without having to admit his culpability.

"I'll have a team start an investigation immediately." Jack stood, thinking that was it and headed for the door.

"Good," Sloane said, "Oh, there is one more thing. Will Tippin has become a problem once more. Security section attempted to kill him this morning but Mr. Tippin survived the accident. You said that if your warning failed, you'd kill him yourself. He's at Trinity General Hospital. It must look like natural causes."

Jack nodded and said, "I'll take care of him."

_Trinity General Hospital_

_11am – 38 Hours Missing_

"Mr. Tippin, your negligence caused a multi-car accident and a man died," Stella stated, her tone more than a little damning and accusatory. Will Tippin was a little banged up but otherwise okay; he was awake and alert enough for the lecture.

"Look, I'm not negligent, I'm not. I had the car fully serviced just last month," Will argued desperately. His mind shied away from the fact that a man died. He didn't want to deal with that, he couldn't be responsible for that, he couldn't. "They must have thought I hadn't dropped the investigation."

That caught Stella's attention, "Who, Mr. Tippin?"

"A guy in a black ski mask. They ran me off the road, hit me over the head, dragged me to this warehouse and threatened me and my family."

"Why were they threatening you?" Danny asked. He hated it when people threatened others, particularly their families.

"It's a story I've been working on. A friend of mine's fiancé was killed. The police said he interrupted someone robbing his apartment; there were no leads and they just closed the case. I felt bad for Sydney, that she didn't know what happened, so I started looking into it. I found that all the cameras within a mile of his apartment weren't working that night. I also found that he was booked on a flight to Singapore that night. My friend said he was going to a medical conference. I checked all the conferences, but he wasn't registered at any of them. His flight was paid for with cash and he wasn't travelling alone. He was supposed to be travelling with a woman named Kate Jones, but she didn't make that flight either. I looked for her and this woman calls me up, says she's Kate Jones. I meet with her and she tells me that she'd been having an affair with Danny. The only thing is Kate Jones died in 1973. This woman's real name was Eloise Kurtz. I go to see her again. She sprays me with pepper spray, and later she calls me, so I go around to her apartment again and she's gone and the walls are freshly painted. Eloise Kurtz then turns up dead, she's been shot. Then my boss rechecks my work and now Kate Jones wasn't listed on that flight. Then my mechanic calls me. Eloise Kurtz had been having car trouble and I recommended my mechanic. He calls me about her car, I go to her car and I find this bug. I take it to a friend of mine, who says it's a next gen listening device, probably government issue, and it was on. I talk to the bug, I get a call from a guy, I call Deep Throat; he's using one of those voice distorters. He then breaks into my car and leaves me a tape of her murder, which doesn't have much on it, just the shots and someone asking if she told me anything about SD-6. I look into SD-6; I only find one reference, a case: the People vs McNeil. Now, McNeil created some encryption software and a company wanted to buy it and wouldn't take no for an answer. He says no and then gets charged with fraud and is doing 16 years. At the same time, his wife 'supposedly' killed herself. He's got a daughter and I didn't want to put her in danger so I took myself off the story. Deep Throat then sent me a key to a locker at the pier where I find David McNeil's wife's autopsy report. I give it to him and now he talks to me. When he created the encryption software, he also created like a guestbook that records who uses it. I accessed the guestbook and looked into the companies that use it; there were 42. Six of them have a common board member, an Alain Christophe, who's ex CIA. Anyway, that's the story," Will tailed off, suddenly becoming aware that he'd been talking for a while and he probably sounded like some sort of crazy conspiracy theorist.

"Do you have any proof?" Danny asked doubtfully. It sounded like a crazy story to him, but he supposed there was a fair bit they could verify or not.

"Well, I got the bug, the murder tape and the printout of the guestbook in my bag over there. I don't know if you could find out if the airline records were changed." Danny went over and rummaged in the bag until he found the specified items.

"Well, we'll look into this Mr. Tippin. An officer will be stationed here for your protection," Stella told him, not mentioning that the officer was primarily there to stop him from running. Right now he was still responsible for one of the biggest pile-ups New York had ever seen.

"Thank you," Will said as he sank back onto the bed relieved. The professionals were going to take care of it now and he could rest.

_FBI Headquarters_

_1pm – 40 Hours Missing_

"Jack." Jack looked up; he'd been working on some reports at his desk. Vivian was at his door.

"Yes, Vivian."

"That multi-car accident this morning was caused by one runaway car. It was driven by Will Tippin. He was taken to Trinity General and died an hour ago."

"Well, that's a strange coincidence. Do you know why his car was out of control?" Jack asked.

"Frayed brake line apparently." Jack nodded. At the moment it didn't seem suspicious and it wasn't their case anyway. Vivian smiled kindly at him and went back to her desk. They'd had a number of possible sightings of Emily Sloane; a few of them even seemed credible. Martin, Danny and Samantha were chasing them down. Apart from that, the trail did seem to have well and truly gone cold.

_FBI Headquarters_

_1pm – 40 Hours Missing_

"Okay, so using the number of miles the van had travelled. The starting point of the rental shop and points of interest plotted on the GPS, I've narrowed down the probable destination of the van to these three blocks," Charlie explained. "There's a 86% probability that your suspect's target was somewhere there."

"I don't know, Charlie, that's still a lot of ground to cover." Don looked doubtfully at the map Charlie had printed out that had the likely blocks coloured red. He didn't understand how Charlie had reached this conclusion based on the little data they'd managed to give him, but he'd learned over the years not to question his brother's math; he probably wouldn't be able to understand the explanation anyway.

"What are these blocks?" Megan asked, looking intently at the map. When Charlie gave them information like this, he usually did a cute little analogy to explain the math. He seemed to have skipped that this time; he did sometimes, usually if what he'd done was similar to something he'd done for them before. She'd just have to ask Larry later.

"That one is residential, low rent apartments mainly," David pointed out while looking it up on the computer. "That one is offices and so is that one."

"Well it's got to be an office, right? Which leaves only two blocks," Megan reasoned. "What businesses are there?" The phone in the office starting ringing. Colby went to answer it.

"Okay, in the east block we got the Stock Exchange; Federal Reserve; Credit Dauphine, an investment bank; Police Museum; Museum of Jewish Heritage . . ."

"Don," Colby interrupted David's list. "That was the morgue; there's been a fire."

_City Morgue_

_2pm – 41 Hours Missing_

"Agent Jack Malone, FBI. What happened?" Jack Malone demanded. When Vivian had told him that a fire had broken out at the morgue not an hour after Will Tippin had been taken there, his sixth sense told him there was something to it.

"I haven't determined the cause of the fire yet," Mac replied, straightening up from where he'd been examining one of the burned bodies. "Detective Mac Taylor, crime lab. What . . ."

"Don Eppes, FBI. What happened here?" Don asked, looking around. Megan, who was with him, wrinkled her nose at the smell of burned flesh.

"As I just told Agent Malone, I haven't determined the cause of the fire yet. What is your interest here, Agent Malone, Agent Eppes?" Mac asked, although he thought he could guess why Don Eppes was here. The bodies that included the case-to-case match victim were here.

"A witness to the abduction of my missing person, Will Tippin, is here. I want to determine if his death is connected. Unless this fire was a tragic accident, someone was trying to cover something up," Jack explained.

Mac thought about the crazy story Will Tippin had told Stella. That had been his first thought on hearing about this fire. "Who's your missing person?"

"Emily Sloane, housewife to Arvin Sloane, CEO of Credit Dauphine," Jack stated

"Credit Dauphine?" Don queried. That had been one of the few businesses David had listed as being in their target block.

"Yes, you know it?"

"No, it's just a possible location for where our dead suspects were when they were killed," Don explained, "We don't have anything to tie them to there, just possibly that city block. It's a long shot."

"Everything's connected," Mac muttered. He could feel that he had pieces, but they weren't fitting together, they were just hovering out of reach. He needed to know more. "I think we should pool information on our cases. See if there are any other connections."

"Okay," Don agreed. He knew this case was bigger than they imagined.

Jack thought for a moment before he echoed his agreement. There was something here, he could feel it, and Arvin Sloane was in the middle just like he thought. "Meet at the FBI headquarters in an hour."


	7. Revelations and Decisions

**Author's Notes:** First of all also always a big thank you to DianeM for beta reading this. Yeah I know I only posted a chapter a few days ago but I felt like posting another one. There's only one more chapter after this and then a teaser epilogue for part two. Enjoy!

* * *

_Sydney Bristow's Apartment_

_2pm – 41 Hours Missing_

"Dad." Sydney opened the door with tear streaks staining her face. Jack cursed Sloane. He hadn't been able to get away any earlier because Sloane had kept him busy. He knew that he hadn't done it on purpose, as he definitely couldn't know why Jack wanted to leave so badly, but Jack blamed him anyway.

"Sydney."

Sydney threw her arms around him and started crying again. Years ago Jack had made the decision to distance himself from her, convinced himself that she'd be better off. It was times like this that he was weak, that he doubted his decision. He just couldn't stand to see her in pain. He put one arm around her and pushed backwards until they were inside and he shut the door. He then let her cry for a minute until she started to calm down slightly before he pulled back. "We need to talk," he said and patted his top pocket where he kept his bug-killing pen. Sydney frowned but nodded and led the way further into her apartment. Francie and Will's sister were crying in the living room. She went past and into her bedroom. Jack pulled out the pen and clicked it on.

"Will's alive,"

"What," Sydney gasped, sinking back on to the bed in shock.

"He'd been investigating Danny's death. I thought that I'd dealt with the situation, but then Sloane called me into his office. He told me that security section had tried to kill Will earlier this morning in a car accident, but that he'd survived. He asked me to kill Will at the hospital. I injected him with a cocktail of substances that put him into a state that mimicked death. I then went to the morgue, took Will to a CIA safehouse and to hide the fact that he was missing, I started a small fire. Thirty seconds."

"I'd warned him not to pursue it, he promised me. Oh, God, what about Francie and Amy?"

"You can't tell them. If Sloane discovered that I saved Will's life . . ."

"I know." The pen bleeped, the minute was up. Jack turned to leave. "Dad." He turned back. "Thanks, for everything." He nodded and did what he did best when it came to Sydney--he left.

_FBI Headquarters_

_3pm – 42 Hours Missing_

The missing persons unit bullpen was bigger, so they met there. Mac and Stella were representing the crime lab; the whole of Don Eppes' team was there, as was the whole missing persons unit.

"Okay, Emily Sloane was abducted from her home at 9 pm the day before yesterday. There was a broken window at the back of the property, but it didn't appear to have been used to enter or exit. Present at the time was her husband, Arvin Sloane." Jack put his picture on the board and continued. "CEO of Credit Dauphine, an old family friend, Jack Bristow, and his daughter Sydney, both of whom work at Credit Dauphine." Jack put both Bristows' pictures on the board. "Also present was . . ."

"Wait," Mac interrupted, standing up and moving closer to the board. He stared at Sydney's picture. "I know her; she was the one who stole the flash drive. She had short red hair but I'm sure it was her." Mac stepped back and pulled out his cell phone and called the lab. He wanted to see if any of the four names they had from the flash drive, which admittedly was a long shot, had made any calls to Sydney Bristow in particular or Credit Dauphine in general.

"Okay, also present was Will Tippin, a reporter who was there as a friend of Sydney Bristow's," Jack said as he finished putting Will's picture on the board. There was no point in mentioning the slew of dead-ends they'd investigated since or the FBI file on Jack Bristow, as they still didn't know what that was about. In truth, they didn't know anything now that they hadn't known the night they were called to the scene, which was more than a little depressing.

Stella stood and moved forward. "Okay, this morning's traffic pileup was caused by Will Tippin. His brake line still appears to not have been tampered with, instead snapping through poor maintenance. However, we have confirmed his story that he had the car professionally serviced last month. The garage is reputable and it seems unlikely that the brake cable could deteriorate so badly in just a month. In addition, when Danny Messer and I interviewed him this morning, he told us that his life had been threatened three days ago." Stella went on to detail what Will Tippin had told her. "We've confirmed that the airline records were doctored and originally a Kate Jones was booked on that flight and that she died in 1973. We've also examined the tape and the bug. As crazy as it seems, I think he was on to something."

Now it was Mac's turn. "Anne Steele was a professional fixer; she made people's problems go away and collected a large amount of blackmail material, which she kept on a flash drive. Trevor Jones killed her for the flash drive. He looked at it and before we could talk to him, he was killed while in police custody. The most likely suspect for his murder was Pete Moss, also in the holding cell at the time, who died in 1976. We now know that Sydney Bristow," Mac tapped her picture, "was the woman who attacked one of my CSI's and stole the flash drive. She was working with an unknown accomplice, who shot at me and another one of my CSI's. We matched the bullets from that shooting to the bullets that killed one of the suspects in Agent Eppes' case. I also just learned that Robert Dunbrook, which is one of only four names we know for sure was on that flash drive, made a call to Credit Dauphine three hours before the flash drive was stolen."

"Just over two weeks ago, we were watching Mason's storage unit and we weren't disappointed. My dead suspects turned up and got kitted out with explosives and machine guns. They shot at us and escaped. Two days ago their bodies turned up in a dumpster near police plaza. One of them had keys on him. We found the van that goes with the keys; the side door had been cut off and there was plastic explosive residue all over the side of the van. My brother Charlie narrowed down where the van was likely to have been to a couple of city blocks. Credit Dauphine is inside one of those blocks," Don reported, finishing the presentation.

"We need to bring Sydney Bristow in for questioning," Mac said firmly, his tone brooking no argument. That woman had attacked one of his people, he would see justice done.

"And get a warrant for Credit Dauphine," Jack said with a hint of satisfaction. He knew Arvin Sloane was dirty. No one could be that cool a customer with FBI agents, particularly when they were trying to be intimidating, not without practice. Finally something was going right, it was all coming together.

_Sydney Bristow's Apartment_

_4pm – 45 Hours Missing_

"Joey's Pizza."

"Wrong number," Sydney said and put the phone down. It would be good to get out of the house, away from a grieving Francie and Amy. Her life was so full of secrets, she hated it, and the guilt was starting to eat her alive. She needed to see Vaughn anyway. The mission yesterday morning, to steal the flash drive, had been so last minute she hadn't been able to contact him first to work out a counter mission. The least she could do was pass on what little information she had about it. "I've got to get some air. I'll be back later."

A few minutes later she was in the customary warehouse meeting spot. To her surprise, not only Vaughn was there waiting for her, but also her father as well. "What's going on?"

"Did you by chance break into the New York Crime Lab yesterday morning?" Vaughn asked with the air of a man who suspects he already knows the answer.

"Yes, it was a really last minute mission. There wasn't time to . . ."

Vaughn waved his hand impatiently. "That's not important. What is important is that you were seen."

"Yes, I know but I was disguised, they didn't get any pictures and I don't know anyone at the crime lab."

"Well, they've identified you somehow. There's a warrant out to bring you in for questioning," Vaughn told her, his face clearly showing his concern for her. "The FBI also applied for a warrant to search Credit Dauphine. We had that blocked obviously and we've suggested that the units in question should be kept busy for a while."

"We have people trying to discover exactly what they know so that we can counter it. Until then you need to lay low. I can put you in the same safehouse as Tippin if you wish." Jack was calm as always. The way he was keeping his calm demeanour this time was picturing creative ways for Sloane to die for putting Sydney in this position. It was as good a calming technique as any.

"No, Dad, I won't go into hiding, particularly not in a CIA safehouse. What about SD-6?" What Sydney left unsaid was that they had to pay for Danny, and now for Will and for putting her in this situation, but Jack knew.

"I understand your frustration but right now we need to be careful. If SD-6 believes that you are a threat to them, you know what steps they will take." Jack let some of his fear for her leak into his voice as frustration. He sometimes despaired that she didn't comprehend the danger she was in.

"I know, I just . . ." Sydney trailed off.

"It won't be forever, just for a little while," Jack promised. It was the best he could do.

_FBI Headquarters_

_5pm – 44 Hours Missing_

"What do you mean the warrant was denied?" Jack Malone demanded of the person at the end of the phone. True, he knew that all they had was circumstantial evidence, but any halfway decent judge should have given them the warrant anyway.

It was not all coming together after all. Sydney Bristow wasn't at her home, and the receptionist claimed that she wasn't at Credit Dauphine either. Now, the warrant for Credit Dauphine had been denied. Without the warrant or Sydney Bristow, they were almost out of leads. The only other lead they had was Dunbrook. Swearing under his breath, Jack conference-called Don Eppes and Mac Taylor. They needed to plan their next move.

Jack didn't bother with pleasantries but cut straight to the heart of the matter, "The warrant was denied."

"Oh, shit," was Don Eppes' response. Mac said nothing; what was there to say after all. Lindsay knocked on his glass office door; he motioned for her to come in.

"Mac, we've got three new cases just come in."

"Okay, I'll take one, Stella'll take one, you and Danny take one. I want Sheldon to stay in the lab, okay?" Mac ordered. Lindsay nodded and left.

Over on Don's end, Megan approached his desk. "We've got a new case, jewellery store robbery."

"Yeah, okay," Don said. "Look, Jack, I've got to go, new case.,"

Danny knocked on Jack's office door as Jack replied, "Yeah me too."

"Three new cases here," Mac cut in.

"I suppose it's not unexpected," Don added hesitantly.

"Dunbrook's our only solid lead left. Aside from an easily explained, if slightly suspicious phone call, we don't have anything on him. Our option would be surveillance, and we don't have the manpower for that or the probable cause," Mac summarised, standing up and reaching for his gun and jacket. He had a crime scene to get to.

"Not officially," Jack said slowly, "but if we combined forces, we could keep two people on him at all times for a little while."

"I have some vacation time saved up," Don offered. It wasn't exactly what he'd planned to use it for, but something was off about this whole thing and he wanted to get to the bottom of it.

"I think we all do," Mac nodded to himself. It was a workable plan. "Let's give it a week." It was the best they could do.


	8. Is this for real?

**Author's Note:** I just realised I'd forgotten to post the rest of this. I know no-one's reading it but still I should have remembered. Thanks as always to DianeM for being the best beta reader in the world. Only the epilogue left and that's tiny. Part Two is still very much in pieces but I will get round to writing it at some point as it's just too much fun not too. Don't know when but it will happen. If anyone is reading this please enjoy it. If not well this was a story where I was selfish and wrote what I wanted to write, what I wanted to read, rather than what I thought others wanted to read.

* * *

_Outside Dunbrook Media_

_Three Days Later_

"Coffee?" Don Eppes held up the thermos. Mac shook his head. They'd been watching Dunbrook's building all day. Mac's five weeks of accumulated leave was finally coming in handy. The media mogul's office had closed for business hours ago, but he was still there. It was frustrating that they didn't know what he was doing, but with no official cause, sitting outside was the most they could do. Even that, if they were caught, would be frowned upon as harassment, particularly of such a rich man as Dunbrook.

"Someone's approaching," Mac said as he pointed at a young blonde-haired man with a silver briefcase, who was walking with purpose to Dunbrook's building. A minute later he was buzzed inside and Dunbrook came down to meet him.

"Mr. Dunbrook, thank you for agreeing to meet with me," Sark greeted the man politely.

"Let's cut to the chase, kid. I want to see your information." Dunbrook wasn't interested in pleasantries.

"It's quite damning, I assure you. You can see the information if I see my money," Sark told him. Dunbrook scowled but raised a hand. A man appeared behind him with a black leather briefcase. He held it and clicked it open, displaying that it was full of money, a lot of it, as the bills were large. The man closed the briefcase and slid it over so it was halfway between Dunbrook and Sark. "Your information." Sark put the briefcase on the floor and kicked it so it slid over to Dunbrook completely.

Dunbrook picked up the briefcase, the man with him came over and acted like a table for him to open it and look inside. He didn't need to see much to lose his colour. Dunbrook raised a hand and three more men appeared and they were armed. Sark dove for cover just in time as a spray of bullets passed through air where he'd been standing just a moment earlier.

"I'll call for backup," Don said, reaching for his radio and talking urgently into it. Mac reached for his gun and readied it. They had been watching and taking photos of this clandestine meeting, hopeful that this would be enough to get them a warrant of some kind. They had never thought they'd have to break up a shootout. Don readied his gun; they got out of his car and ran over to Dunbrook's building.

"Police!" "FBI!" they shouted, taking cover and anticipating the spray of bullets that would be sent their way. In the distance they could hear sirens rapidly approaching. They wouldn't be on their own for long. Dunbrook was hiding under the receptionist's desk; the two briefcases were abandoned in the middle of the room. Sark had cover behind a visitor's waiting chair. It was he whom Dunbrook wanted eliminated, so his position was getting shot at the most. The bullets mostly hit the chair, but some passed over and hit the glass wall behind him. It was good quality glass and took three bullets before it shattered. Mac and Don were shooting at the people who were shooting at them at that point, when they wounded one of the shooters that drew the entirety of the other two men's fire. Sark took that opportunity to escape out of the shattered wall. A minute later two squad cars pulled up and Dunbrook's men bowed to the inevitable and surrendered.

"All right, let's see what Dunbrook was willing to kill so openly for," Don said, gesturing to the glass walls of the lobby, most of which were shattered by gunfire now. He opened the briefcase and read the first couple of sheets. "Holy shit!" He passed it to Mac, who read the same pages and whistled in admiration. If the rest of the pages in this briefcase were anywhere near as good, they were holding the equivalent of the Holy Grail. Unfortunately, it wasn't going to be their collar, not with information like this; it was the CIA's game now.

_CIA Operations Center_

_The Next Day_

"Holy shit, is this legit?" Weiss questioned, having started to read part of the information briefcase. Mac didn't have the CIA's number obviously but he'd called his boss, who'd called state, who'd called them. They'd taken custody late last night.

"It'll take a little time to go through and verify what we can, but so far it looks promising," Kendall told him.

"I got to tell Sydney," Vaughn commented, reading some files himself. "She'll want to be a part of this."

"I've called both Bristows. Having an agent on the inside and one on the infiltration team who's familiar with the building will be helpful." Kendall was almost rubbing his hands together in glee. While he hadn't been head of this task force that long, which was a little annoying, he would have preferred to have been in charge a little while longer. He couldn't deny that taking the Alliance down on his watch would do wonders for his career. There had been agents trying to take the Alliance down since its inception fifteen years ago, and now it was almost over.

_CIA Safehouse_

_The Same Time_

"Is this legit?" Sydney asked, her voice heavy with disbelief. They couldn't possibly be that lucky, right?

"That seems to be the question of the day," Jack told her. "They're verifying what they can now. We need to go to the ops-center to get briefed. I know you haven't been there before. We'll go in through the underground car park today; there is a covert entry through the park. I'll walk you through that later if it becomes necessary."

"Syd, you do know your life is insane, right?" Will looked at her with a smile. He wasn't sure what this news meant for him yet. Ideally he'd like to come back from being dead, as he knew how upset his family was likely to be. He didn't know if that was possible, though he hoped at the very least they could subtly let them know he was okay. Whatever happened with him, he could certainly see how much this news meant to Sydney and while he would certainly be within his rights to blame her for what had happened to him, he couldn't. Sure, life would be a little easier maybe if they weren't friends. He certainly wouldn't be hiding in a CIA safehouse with almost everyone he knows believing him dead, but life would also be a lot less interesting, he couldn't imagine life without Sydney. This news meant a lot to her, even if he had to stay dead, he was happy for her.

Sydney thought about what Will didn't know. She'd explained things to him in general terms, as he'd been full of questions when she'd arrived at the safehouse; however, she was loathe to discuss specifics because the more information he had, the more danger he was in. She hadn't mentioned her mother and the fact that she'd recently discovered that she had been a KGB spy who'd killed twelve CIA agents. That was an insane complication in her life. At least that chapter was over; her mother had died in an accident in 1981. She also hadn't mentioned her feelings for Vaughn, although that was more for Will's sake. She hoped it wasn't the case, but she thought he still harboured a small crush on her. It would have been difficult to have fully explained the issues with Vaughn. Not only did strict rules govern the relationship between handler and asset, but there was also the small matter that her mother had killed his father. Not to mention the insane stunts that missions sometimes called for, particularly once she'd started pulling double agent duty.

"Yeah, it's pretty insane," Sydney agreed. "Now I've got to go."

Will thought of all the times Sydney had said that right before she'd gone out of the door on a banking business trip. He had no idea where she'd really gone or the danger she'd been in. He'd just blindly said "Okay, see you when you get back." While he liked knowing the truth, he didn't care for the worry he felt for her. "Okay, stay safe."

_FBI Headquarters_

_Later That Day_

"Hey, how you doing?" Martin casually leaned against Samantha's desk as she was packing up. They'd just closed another case. Their missing person, Carl Robson, had turned up dead in the trunk of his car, not a great end to a day.

"I'm okay," Samantha replied. She thought she knew what Martin was lingering for and she wasn't sure how she felt about it. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jack in his office; she wasn't sure how she felt about that either.

"I'm going for a drink, you want to come?" Martin asked nice and casually. "I invited Danny but he's busy."

Samantha hesitated; it didn't seem like a big deal, a colleague's thing. "Okay."

_CIA Operations Center_

_The Next Day_

"Okay, all teams, you have a green light. Go, go, go," Kendall ordered, watching the board. They'd verified what they could late last night and he'd been up ever since organising this. The logistics were hell: simultaneous raids on sixteen locations, in nine countries, coordinating with five other intelligence agencies. He was definitely getting a promotion.

Over at Credit Dauphine, Sydney led the way over to the junction box, in the underground car park. A CIA strike team member attached a remote modem and hacked out the CCTV. She'd done the same thing with Dixon many times. He was going to hate her. She'd wanted to tell him but had let Vaughn persuade her that she couldn't volunteer someone else for double agent duty given the added danger. Somehow she knew, though, that Dixon wasn't going to see it like that. Her father was upstairs; she'd argued against that, as it placed him in the line of fire. He was keeping an eye on the four other agents who knew that they were working for the Alliance as opposed to a covert branch of the CIA. If he could he was to take them down when the strike team entered. They, along with security section, were the most dangerous. Sydney felt her gut twist in worry. What if Dixon or her other colleagues decided to fight back? They were patriots who thought they were defending their country. This coming just two weeks after another team had entered SD-6 and forcefully taken control of the building, they would probably be even more in mind to fight back. So much could go wrong with this.

Vaughn touched her gently on the shoulder and smiled reassuringly. It was time. They pulled masks over their faces and readied their assault rifles. They went through the access door. Sydney used her father's code to deactivate the lasers, advantages of high-level clearance. Then they were upstairs shooting at the security section and ordering everyone else to the ground. It was chaos, chaos loosely controlled through training, but chaos nonetheless. To her relief, neither Dixon nor any of her other friends fought back, but allowed themselves to be subdued. The agents on the strike team were identifying themselves as CIA proper. They all knew the lie that the SD-6 people had been sold and they were working within that for now. There would be time for explanations later. Sydney pulled off her mask and instantly saw Dixon's confused eyes settle on her and, as expected, she saw faint stirrings of feelings of betrayal before he was dragged away.

Sydney looked around for Jack. "Vaughn, where's my father?" she asked him . She didn't know what she'd expected from him, but some sort of moment where the two double agents realised they'd done it would have been good.

"I don't know, I haven't seen him," Vaughn replied absently. Then taking in her expression, he focused on her completely. "I'm sure he's okay, Syd, I'll help you look for him." Over the next hour they combed all of SD-6, they even pressed Weiss into service to help them look. All strike team members had been informed of Jack's role during the mission briefing, so they knew he wouldn't have been taken into custody accidentally. They didn't find him, though; Jack Bristow had vanished.


	9. Epilogue: Hanging from a Cliff

**Author's Note:** This teaser epilogue concludes part one of the major crossover. Thanks as always to DianeM for being an amazing beta reader. I don't know when I'll be able to get part two done but it will get done. Anyway, enjoy!

* * *

_CIA Operations Center_

_Later That Day_

"I'm sure something's happened to him," Sydney insisted. "We didn't get Sloane; maybe he took Dad with him,"

"I think that would be a safe assumption, Agent Bristow," Kendall said, his face stony. Sydney felt her heart drop. What had happened to her dad? "At the same time as the Alliance raid, the CIA's collection of Rambaldi artifacts was being transported from this facility to another on the orders of Jack Bristow." Kendall nodded at a technician agent and on the computer monitor in front of them a CCTV image appeared of a truck stopped at traffic lights. Sydney watched in silence as two smoke grenades took out the guards. Another van pulled up and Sloane got out of the driver's cab. Between Sloane and the two masked robbers who had held up the truck, they had the Rambaldi artifacts transferred from the CIA truck to their own in just over a minute. This was obviously bad news, but she didn't understand what it had to do with her dad, not until the two masked robbers pulled their masks off and got in the truck.

"Dad," Sydney breathed in disbelief and then she focused on the second person, someone she had believed long dead. "Mom!"

_FBI Headquarters_

_That Same Time_

"What can I do for you, ma'am?" the desk agent asked the woman who'd just walked in.

"I'd like to speak to the lead agent of the missing person's unit," she said carefully. The agent looked at her with concern; she sounded like she was in shock.

"Okay," he said soothingly. "Who should I say is here to see him?"

"Emily Sloane."

_Sullivan's Bar_

_That Same Time_

"So, what do you reckon happened with that info?" Danny Messer wondered out loud.

"Well, I hope the CIA kicked major international terrorist ass," David Sinclair replied, which caused everyone to laugh for no real reason. The whole crime lab and the FBI team were here. Charlie, Amita and Larry had even come along. They were all riding that pleasant buzz every cop gets when they close a case successfully. They were happy and then bullets starting flying through the window from a passing car.

To Be Continued . . .


	10. How it Ends

I'm going to do something now that I hate it when other author's do. That probably, well definitely, makes me a hypocrite. So I'm sorry, well I would be sorry if I thought that anyone else had read this, enjoyed it and wanted to read more. I certainly wanted to read more when I got to the end and I specced out part two with another cliffhanger bit for part three. Then real life happened and I didn't write it and I've sort of lost my enthusiasm for it. I had so much fun writing this because it was whacked out having a four show crossover. It made me laugh. However, the ending when you had to get to the conclusion was weak. Of course it was, that's the failing point of any crossover, how to get them to fully crossover and interact. Reading my plans for part two was just making it worse. Yes there was some good stuff in there but most of it was making me roll my eyes in a "yeah right" sort of way.

However, given the cliffhanger I left this on I can't just leave it like that. I also don't want to bash something short out in order to tie it all up. I either have to do it as intended or not at all. I'm choosing the not at all option leaving me the problem of the cliffhanger. So basically what I'm going to do is just write what my notes were for what happens next. It's not as exciting as the flow of a story but it doesn't leave it horribly unfinished either. So here's the list of what happens/scenes. I won't subject you to my rambling plan.

* * *

**Behind Brown Eyes**  
- At Sullivan's bar. Mac's got a shoulder wound, Lindsay and Larry have been shot in the chest, Danny's been hit with some flying glass.  
- Jessica Angell at precinct babysitting Dunbrook. Disturbs his breakout and gets shot. (I wrote this scene and quite liked it so see end)  
- Jack Malone interviews Emily Sloane. She offers information on where Sloane is holed up if Jack promises he won't get the death penalty.  
- Jack tells the CIA and they go and raid the Italian house  
- Meanwhile The CSI and Numb3rs team discover that the Snowman was the one responsible for hosing the bar and they investigate him (I think this was supposed to lead somewhere)  
- Anyway CIA raid the Italian house. Syd and Irina have a showdown there, Irina tells Syd to trust Jack and the "Truth takes time" a lot like canon really only Syd doesn't shoot Irina  
- Irina drops a disk or something giving the location of the warehouse where all the Rambaldi artifacts are stored. You see she's not evil and she went to see Sloane (she was the mysterious visitor that makes everything change from part one) she also obviously went to see Jack and got him on side with her plan to destory all the artifacts. Anyway, she rigs the warehouse to explode when the CIA raid it, more implosion than explosion, so all the artifacts are vaporised.  
- Unfortunately for the plan Khasinua isn't her man, which is why The Man (aka Irina) was thought to have been behind the SD-6 invasion. He's really working for Elena and they steal all the artifacts giving her all the pieces to build the Firebomb.  
- Sloane, Jack and Irina retreat to Irina's base of operations in Taipei. I'd planned for Jack and Irina to fight here, after all there's pretty clear evidence (that giant mueller) device that Irina isn't destroying Rambaldi artifacts, she's building them. That's not the case obviously, well it is, but it was in order to find out the secret, the antidote. I mean that mueller device turns up loads so it's a reasonable precaution. Anyway, they split up here.

- Jack and Irina head to Bangkok after the manuscript that tells where the heart is (which is needed to power Il Dire)  
- Sloane goes to the FBI to rescue his wife. A bit of a shooting match. However, he just uses tranqs rather than bullets because he really does love Emily. Jack Malone doesn't know this though and 'takes a bullet' well tranq as it turns out for Sam. Another nail in the coffin of his marriage. Risking his life for her is getting to be a habit. Anyway, Sloane locks up Emily somewhere saying that she'll understand in time that he's only doing it for them.  
- Meanwhile Jack and Irina know they are in trouble. They've lost all the artifacts to someone unknown. They need a bargaining chip and fast. They also need backup but they can't trust anyone. Irina's operation is comprimised as Khasinua was her number two. The CIA may also be comprimised as the timing was a little too convenient what with the raid and the theft happening at the same time. They need to look outside the CIA for help.  
- Elena needs help too, specifically a high level mathmatician to build the firebomb. So she goes to grab Charlie. He's at the hospital visiting Larry. Samantha was there too getting fixed up (flying glass) from Sloane's FBI raid. She fights obviously and so Elena grabs them both.  
- Jack and Irina of this development and decide that the conspiracy taskforce is just what they need. They need a mathmatician to decode the genetic database (Amita) and it doesn't take much background checking (something Jack probably did already when the warrents were applied for against Syd) to discover Colby is a spy. Now let's FTL is chinese intelligence. I know it's not but it was based in Hong Kong and it's not the first canon fact I've twisted. FTL was destroyed by Sark and so it's assets will have been picked up by others. Elena, Irina and Sloane. Lancer is an asset and luckily for the good guys he was picked up by Elena.  
- They co-ordinate this plan. Meet back up with Sloane. He goes to meet with Kabir to get the other half of the manuscript but he knows that Kabir will want this show of power, probably against his traitorous ex-wife. So plan. They tell Sloane they'll use the mueller virus (and he goes off to Kabir). What they don't tell him is that they send Sark to the CIA (he pretends he has a conscience) and leads them to the cure (and escapes while there). That way no-one will die. They plan to grab Kabir's ex-wife and make it look like she died (real high dose or something) so Kabir still bites but no-one else suffers.  
- The other plan is following Colby's intel. He passes it to Dwayne Carter who passes it to Lancer who meets with his new handler - Haldecki. Haldecki doesn't know much, but he's a spineless worm, maybe Megan could use her DOJ skills to break him. Haldecki gives them a location.  
- They also need to go for the genetic database to find the heart and then get the heart so that's three places they need to be. Mexico, Panama and was it Switzerland? where the genetic database is. Jack and Irina can't cover all that and the conspiracy taskforce don't trust them anyway and want to watch their every move. So Hawkes, David, Danny Taylor and Flack go with Irina to Mexico to make people sick (see how I mixed the teams there). Jack goes for the genetic database with Stella and Danny as his watchers. He gets it and gives it to Amita who cracks it. Irina goes to Panama for the heart on her own. Flack and Hawkes are watching Kabir's wife and there's going to be lots of panic so I thought that David and Danny would be like crowd control.  
- They not have a location for Elena, the heart and instructions on how to build Il Dire. These are so much better than the firebomb as that was a tool of Rambaldi's endgame whereas The Telling is the key to his endgame. They're hoping it's enough. Stella and Danny are guarding Haldecki.  
- With an assault team of Don, Jack Malone and Mac they go for Elena. Irina and Elena have a sister on sister moment when Irina lets her distate for Rambaldi be known. They free Charlie and Samantha, set a load of C4 on the firebomb to destroy it, but before they can get the hell out of dodge Sloane interferes. He says he should have expected the betrayal and sides with Elena.  
The CIA starts to finally piece stuff together. They're a bit behind given that it's chaos there what with dealing with all the Alliance people. They find out where Jack, Irina et al have headed and get a raid team together. The have a cool gizmo that tells them that there are seven people in the building. They're just about to go in when the building explodes.  
- Cut to CIA headquarters, Nadia walks in and asks to speak to her sister  
- Cut to Maria at home writing a letter for Jack "I don't want to be married to you anymore"  
- Cut to Sark telling Cuvee the six nukes he wanted are in position.

* * *

**Part Three**

I haven't specced this out. Can you tell why I didn't want to write part two? It got really weak with the working together bit. How else was I supposed to keep everybody involved? I also don't really know about part three. Basically Nadia tells the CIA that there's a third player (they were just blaming Sloane, Jack and Irina for everything) so now they know about Elena. The suitcase nukes. I hadn't fully decided about that. In canon they were used to power the device that opened the flower (proof of everlasting life) however, they also had nukes, big launcher ones in the season five finale, with the plan being to profit billions from the reconstruction so that's a possiblity for use as well. Also, was going to bring in Cuvees echelon terminal. Anyway, nobody died by the way. The seven people weren't the main characters obviously. Jack and Irina distracted Elena and Sloane long enough for Mac, Don, Jack, Sam and Charlie to escape. They were then captured. The seven people were Elena's men, maybe couple of snatched virus victims I'm not sure.

Anyway, Elena and Sloane will build Il Dire and get the formula for the zombie creating chemical and they'll build Il Diluvio. So there's lots for the good guys to stop and they do stop it. The good guys always win. Elena and Sloane and Cuvee die. Rambaldi's machines are all destroyed. Jack and Irina get together, Irina gets pardoned. Hey maybe they start APO so Irina can work for the CIA only not openly obviously. They meet Nadia and it's all good. Jack and Sam get together. Hell if I've hinted at a romantic relationship then they get together and they don't live happily ever after because that would be impossible and boring but they do have good lives. That's a lame ending but I really don't know. That's all I got though. Hope that ties things up and makes it finished in a way that isn't too annoying. Thank you!

* * *

**Behind Brown Eyes Scenes**

_14__th__ Precinct_

_Day One – 8.20pm_

"See you tomorrow," Jessica Angell waved at her colleague who had just taken over from her. Until the CIA got their act together they were left babysitting Dunbrook and she was one of the detectives who'd drawn the short straw. Jess was halfway across the strangely empty precinct when she realised she'd left her jacket. Cursing she went back to get it. She was almost there when she heard the distinctive sound of a gunshot. One hand instinctively went to her gun, the other to her cellphone.

"This is Detective Angell, badge number 9408/9521. Send all available units to the 14th Precinct, armed escape in progress," Jess whispered creeping along the corridor towards Dunbrook's cell. She put her cellphone away, both hands on her gun now she peered round the corner. The colleague who had just moments ago relieved her of duty was dead, a bullet hole between his eyes. Jess could hear the sound of keys; someone was at Dunbrook's cell, she got a little closer, it was a woman.

"Police," Jess yelled training her gun on the woman. The woman turned round and raised her hands as if in surrender, a small smile playing across her lips. Thoroughly unnerved Jess pointed the gun even more firmly at her suspect. "On your knees," the woman complied. Jess slowly, never moving the gun away from her, moved round and got behind her. "Hands on your head," again the woman complied. Jess took one hand off her gun to reach behind her back for the handcuffs; she got them and took a step forward reaching for the woman's left arm at the same time returning her gun to her holster. That's when the woman struck. One hand grabbed Jess' outstretched arm, while she rolled and kicked in a sweeping motion. Jess was launched up over her suspect where she landed hard and lost her grip on her gun, it went clattering across the floor a few feet away. Even with the wind knocked out of her Jess made a grab for the gun but the woman was faster. Jess got to her feet intending to try and get it back; she was no slouch at hand to hand. Although the way the woman had thrown her indicated she was dealing with an expert. She never got a chance the woman raised the gun and fired once. Jess fell backwards to the ground, blood spreading across her shirt. Her vision was starting to tunnel but she could hear perfectly, the jingling sound of keys again and then the squeak as the cell door opened.

"Thank you for extracting me," Dunbrook said, he looked down at Jess and shook his head in something like amusement, "You should have known not to challenge a Derevko,"

_~ Flashback ~_

"Good evening Arvin," Sloane looked up so fast his neck cracked. A woman walked out of the shadows of the corner of the room.

"Irina Derevko," Sloane stated automatically. Long years of practice kept him looking calm but internally his mind was spinning. Irina Derevko, otherwise known as Laura Bristow, he'd known of course for twenty years that she had survived the accident, that the accident hadn't been an accident but an extraction. As ordered he'd kept the fact that she was alive from Jack, but otherwise he hadn't thought about her in almost twenty years. What was she doing here? "Can I offer you a glass?"

Irina gave a throaty laugh, "You always were one for pleasantries Arvin," she sat down in the chair in front of his desk.

"Would you prefer I just asked you straight what you're doing here?" Sloane asked pouring himself a glass.

Irina nodded, "I am a busy woman Arvin for all that I have taken you by surprise. Now I have a proposition for you,"

"I'm listening," Sloane took a sip of the wine, excellent vintage.

"You are I share a common interest, namely Rambaldi. We both have pieces of the puzzle, it would be impossible for either of us to solve it alone. I propose a partnership,"

"You took the manuscript," Sloane stated pleasantly.

Irina smiled, "An employee of mine did, yes. That artefact is of particular interest to me,"

"And my wife," Sloane's tone was now ice cold, his eyes promised death.

"I expect by now you have been called by the Alliance, that they've told you that Emily has became aware of your involvement with SD-6. When I first learnt of this I thought that they would dispatch a security section team, I wasn't sure of how much time there was. I did have Emily taken Arvin, but to save her not to hurt her," Irina explained, mentally holding her breath, this had to go right, a lot depended on this. Without Sloane's cooperation the plan would never work.

Sloane said nothing for a long moment; his eyes were piercing, as if they were tying to evaluate her, to see if she spoke the truth. After a minute he nodded, "Ok, but you must be aware that this situation has perhaps irreparably damaged my standing within the Alliance."

Irina mentally sighed with relief before pasting on a smile, "That's why you're going to do this . . ."

_~ End Flashback ~_


End file.
